Trump did far worse in the election (incumbent) than we should have expected
By the standards of most other incumbents, his reelection campaign was a historic failure
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/11/09/trump-incumbency-advantage-defeat/
But the truth is that Trump did far worse in last week’s election than he should have, and that his reelection campaign was a historic failure. Incumbency is a far greater advantage, this year, than it has been made out to be. And during an ongoing crisis, American voters tend to choose the devil they know over the one they don’t. It’s really hard to overstate the incumbent advantage in U.S. politics. In most cases, incumbent presidents not only win reelection, but also substantially increase their popular-vote margin. Twenty-one American presidents have served a second term. Among these, only three were unable to grow their vote share significantly in their second election. Between their first and second elections, Thomas Jefferson, Ulysses S. Grant and Ronald Reagan doubled their popular-vote margins over their opponents. Franklin D. Roosevelt improved his by 80 percent, and Bill Clinton by 50 percent.
The presidential historian Allan Lichtman told NPR that this is because incumbents have “name recognition, national attention, fundraising and campaign bases, control over the instruments of government, successful campaign experience” and the benefit of voters’ “risk aversion.” This can manifest as an aversion to any new risk over substantial risks people are already experiencing. Incumbents can win in recessions. Incumbents can win when lots of Americans are dying. Incumbents win even during periods of exceptionally low American satisfaction with the state of the nation. Some incumbents win reelection handily during periods of national crisis or scandal — think George W. Bush in 2004 against the backdrop of the faltering Iraq War and his top weapons inspector’s admission that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction.
The basis of the conclusion that Trump did surprisingly well was, on the right, that Trump outperformed polls — which, obviously, are not working — and, on the left, that Trump is such an anomaly that anything banal or normal such as “incumbency advantage” ought not apply to him. But given Trump’s incumbency and the state of the economy in his first three years, his baseline should have been to win comfortably. If you forget the polls and the idea that anybody voting for Trump should feel demoralizing, his electoral performance was, simply, a sensational failure. It’s not to Democrats’ advantage to move the goal posts such that a potentially historic win by a challenger — Biden — comes to feel, emotionally, like a defeat. This is the kind of narrative for which Republicans argue — not just this year, but all the time. The conservative magazine American Greatness argued on Thursday that the election “resoundingly validates President Trump’s policies,” pointing to Trump’s “historic victory” with Florida Latinos. “That is the incontestable reality,” the editorial continued, “no matter the vote [count].”
The wording here is important. A Republican triumph is an emotional “reality” that cannot be contested no matter the real reality. Insofar as the goal of much of conservative politics these days is to ding Democrats’ pride, they make themselves out as tremendous underdogs in America, such that any votes they receive are a surprising triumph and a humiliation for Democrats, who always ought to do better. Thus, every swing state or nationwide election becomes a 16th seed facing a top dog. And even a narrow loss or draw — like, say, a popular-vote loss offset by an electoral college victory — is an awesome upset, a “win,” an owning-of-the-libs, proof of Democratic weakness. The rules always shift such that even a dismal result for them can be called in their favor. In 2016, to win meant winning the electoral college. In 2020, to win means winning more people, by a raw head count, than Trump won in 2016, or maybe just more Latinos. The conservative Free Beacon actually declared Thursday that Trump “won” because he “accomplished his goal of becoming the most famous person on Earth.”